1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of managing voicemails from a mobile telephone.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Voicemail has the sole purpose of storing voice messages from someone trying to call a user's telephone when that user is otherwise unavailable and then relaying those messages to the user when convenient. But today's voicemail systems, particularly for mobile telephones, fail to do this intelligently. The primary reason is the nature of the interface from the user's mobile telephone to the remote voice mail server: typically, a mobile telephone user will call (or be called by) a voicemail server controlled by the network operator. The voicemail server will generate a synthetic voice announcing the number of messages to the user and then replaying the messages; various options are then spoken by the synthetic voice, such as “press 1 to reply”, “press 2 to delete”, “press 3 to repeat” etc. This presents several challenges to the user: first, he may not have a pen and paper to hand to take down any important information; secondly, he may forget or not be able to hear the options and hence will be unable to operate the voicemail system effectively.
Because of this inadequate and opaque interface, voicemail is not used by at least 45% of mobile telephone users. Of those that do use voicemail, it typically accounts for 30% of a user's call time and spend. One of the reasons for this perhaps surprisingly high level is that, because of the difficult interface, users frequently dial in again just to listen to key voice messages they did not get the details of the first time round.
Some efforts have been made to make retrieving voicemails easier: reference may be made for example to U.S. Pat. No. 6,507,643 to Breveon Inc: in this patent, voice mail is automatically converted, using a voice recognition computer, to a text message suitable for sending as an e-mail message and for viewing on a text display device such as a PC or laptop computer. Reading a written message can be quicker than having to listen to a spoken voicemail; there is also no need to write down important information from the message since it has already been transcribed. However, automated voicemail systems have quite limited performance and accuracy; they also slavishly transcribe the normal hesitations in human speech (‘er’, ‘um’, ‘ah’ etc.). When one is listening to human speech, one can readily filter out these sounds and concentrate on the substantive communication. Seeing these hesitations slavishly transcribed to a text message or an e-mail can make the sender appear less then lucid.